


Hackamore

by goldfinch



Category: The Knick (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Drug Addiction, Gen, Road Trips, Sailing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-26 18:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5014906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfinch/pseuds/goldfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a three-day journey back to New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hackamore

Six hours after they turned toward New York, Thack hadn’t said a word except to ask where the water was. He’d been quiet most of the day, even before he’d finished the last knot—a moderately complicated bowline—and now it seemed to have settled on him. He'd spent a lot of time staring out past the stern. But just as Everett was starting to consider the end of the day, Thack shook himself a little, and sat up a little straighter.

"Where's that water jug?"

“That big cabinet, just there.” Everett leaned to point into the gloom. “There’s a latch—lift it up. And bring the lantern.” Now that they were on their way back, there was no need to conserve oil, and dusk was starting to fall. Dark seas, dark skies, fog rolling in from the east. In an hour it would be dark.

Everett turned back toward the sails as Thack started rummaging around; it was dim enough in the cabin already that he was probably having trouble seeing, especially in the coffin-dark of the hold, but he came up with the lantern eventually. In the sudden brightness Everett saw the dark hair on Thack’s face, the unwashed stretch of cheek and forehead. The angle of the light made him look skeletal, and strange, and still more haggard.

Thack levered himself up onto the deck, staring out past the boom with his hair blown across his forehead. Everett looked but there was nothing out there but the black surface of the sea, wrinkled and shining. “Do you have another coat?” Thack asked.

Again, Everett pointed toward the hold.

When Thack had wrapped another coat around him and taken his seat again on the other side of the stairs, he said, “I have to tell you, Dr. Gallinger, this was not your best idea,” His voice was flat and chiding, as though they were still at the Knick, and he’d walked in on Everett working on some ill-advised research. “The North Atlantic in the middle of winter. There was four feet of snow on the ground when we left Chromartie, and you have a patient in your care.”

“You were running a fever the first two days.”

“And now I am freezing.”

“You’ll get used to it.” It was true. When Everett’s father took him sailing as a boy, he’d had not much more clothing on than he did now. Long johns, trousers, heavy shirt and overcoat, woolen scarf and cap and socks. Pouring over the nautical charts until his eyes ached: latitude and longitude, set and drift, the fathomless machinations of the sea.

Once he’d learned what he needed to know, it was easy enough. Sailing had become like surgery was now, smooth and instinctive, the movement of the ocean like the movement of the heart, the lungs, the infinitesimal twitches of the unconscious body, a chain of reaction he only had to study. If this then that. If that, then this. Staunch the bleeding; set the bone. If one’s wife goes mad, one must bring her to a madhouse. If one works hard, one will be promoted.

That was the way of the world as Everett had learned it.

Beside him, Thack shifted, and huddled further into the lining of his coat. “How long before we’re back?” he asked.

“About three days, assuming we don’t get any storms.”

Thack cast a perfunctory look out over the water. “Well, we haven’t yet.”

“No.” Except for the storm Thack had been all on his own, raging and vomiting in turns. Everett was familiar with the excretions of the body, but that was why they had nurses at the hospital. It was hardly within a surgeon’s purview to empty buckets of vomit over the side of his boat into the Atlantic. But then, Everett had known what he was getting into back at Chromartie, when he pressed the chloroform-soaked rag over Thack’s mouth and carried him into the back of the carriage. It was what he had been willing to do. Anything, God, anything to get out from under Edwards. Anything to get what he deserved. What was his by rights.

“When we land, you’ll inquire about returning to the Knick,” Everett said, staring out toward the invisible shoreline.

Thack looked at him. It was not the way he’d had been looking at him since he woke, as though Everett were the orchestrator of all evil in the world. This was a cutting look, focused and cool. “I will,” he said slowly. He looked exhausted. “I’ll need equipment and subjects to conduct my research. And money, I suppose.”

“Good.” Everett glanced away, and then back. Thack still looked too interested. “Honestly," he said, "I don’t care what you do, I just—Edwards is Acting Chief of Surgery, while you’re away. They lifted my suspension last week but I won’t work under him.”

“So this isn’t an altruistic venture after all.” Thack looked away, seemingly disinterested. “He’s not going anywhere, you know. He’s too good.”

One fist clenched against the boom, his leather work glove creaking. “He might. I can damn well try to make him.”

Thack made a low noise in his throat, but said nothing. He was staring off at the ocean again, and Everett glanced out over the water. There was nothing visible but the flat dark surface of the sea, and the miles and mile of water under it. That was enough to frighten some people—Eleanor, for one—but of course the sea, on its own, was nothing to fear. Everett was an excellent sailor, and the boat was strong. If something went wrong, he knew what to do. It was men and women who were unpredictable. They did things he could not anticipate, for reasons he could not fathom, or explain.

Like Thack’s desire for cocaine. The drug brought him no benefits, but he would have used it until it destroyed him. Might still, if he was given the chance.

“Once we’re working again,” Everett said, “you have to tell me if you’re going to use cocaine.”

“Cocaine?” Thack blinked, giving him a brief, bemused look, and then seemed to recognize the word. “Right, of course.” But then he shook his head, wincing, as though it pained him—which it probably did. “Sorry, why would I do that?”

“So I can stop you. I won’t have you sliding back into all-night research sessions, mad experiments, killing children—“

Thack flinched, a full-body movement that was impossible to miss. So that was a sore point, then. As it should be. “That won’t happen again,” Thack murmured. And then demanded he be fed.

So Everett lashed the tiller in place, and they ate a supper of cured mutton and cheese and the last of the flatbread. Afterward, Everett brought out his flask. If they had been in New York he might have had a cigar too, but Thack, like he was, with his unshaven face and the defensive curve of his spine, was hardly the sort of company one smoked cigars with. Which was perhaps for the best, since the wind shifted and Everett had to stand up again, before he’d even had a drink, to set the mainsail a bit more toward starboard.

“What does it mean, the name of your boat?” Thack asked as Everett sat. “Amorita.” He sounded it out, carefully, as though the word was something he had to taste. “Is it Spanish?”

“Yes. ‘Little darling.’ The boat used to be my father’s.” Everett lay a gentle palm against the deck. “He gave it to Eleanor and I as a wedding gift. We were supposed to sail the world, or the harbor, at least, but Eleanor quickly discovered she couldn’t abide being on the water. I only take it out a few times a year, now. Mostly in the summertime.”

“Must be nice out here, when you’re not using it as a prison.”

“It was what was necessary. You wouldn’t have come back on your own, and I need you at the Knick.”

“Yes, you’ve said.” He took a long swig of water, then gestured impatiently for Everett’s flask. “You were the only one who ever came to visit me, you know. Not even—“ He stopped himself, but what name was he going to say then? Bertie? Miss Robertson—or rather, Mrs. Showalter? One of the hospital administrators? 

“It didn’t help that you weren’t registered under your own name,” Everett said. “I had to all but strong-arm the desk staff into admitting you were even there.”

“Yes.” Thack gave an unamused little huff. It came out in a white cloud of disdain, and Thack eyed it, then took another pull from the flask before handing it back. “No visitors, no letters, but the first person to come see me knocks me out and kidnaps me. Whyever did Chickering insist I use a pseudonym.”

The whiskey was cool, going down, but settled in Everett’s stomach like a fistful of blue flame. “They told us not to visit. Those of us who knew where you were, anyway. I suppose for the same reason that doctor called you Mr. Crutchfield.”

“They’re embarrassed by me. Whiskey,” he added, holding out his hand again for the flask. “I suppose they’ll thank you, for removing that potential blight on the hospital’s reputation. Having a cocaine fiend as Chief Surgeon.”

“You still are one,” Everett said dryly. “As long as you need cocaine, I think you will be.”

Thack lifted the flask, as though in toast. “For the rest of my life, then.” He drank, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Or, until I find a cure.”

“Yes. Good luck with that.”

Thack’s look then, in the lowering dark, in the cut-off glare of the lantern, was almost amused. “You and your altruistic heart. At least I can trust your motivations.” He sat for a moment longer, then shook his head, and rose to go down into the cabin. Everett watched as he pulled Everett’s spare cap on over his ears, then flung himself down fully-clothed on the narrow bed. Apparently he was going to sleep.

“Goodnight,” Everett called.

Stars were starting to come out overhead. But the fog was coming on fast, and they would only have another half hour or so before he’d be navigating using only charts and instinct. There was no hurry to get back to New York, though, really. He could let them stall for the night: reefed sails, dropped anchor; they were close enough to land that the ocean floor was probably no more than sixty feet down. Or he could heave the boat to, backing the jib to windward and easing the mainsail, and trust that the rise and fall of the waves wouldn’t carry them too far off course. Either option was viable. Either option, given Thack’s complete and utter unsuitability as a first mate, made sense.

“I still want to sock you in the mouth,” Thack called from the cabin.

Everett lifted his eyes to the heavens. “I’m sure. Just go to sleep, god damn it. I’ll keep the watch.”

Or he could just go on sailing, sleeping in snatches, to make sure nothing went wrong in the night. It was what he’d been doing so far, even hove to, because Thack would sometimes shake and cry in the darkness. Now there was only the ceaseless lapping of the waves against the side of the boat, a sound Everett had always loved. He would go on sailing, then, he decided. He settled more comfortably against the hull, lifting one hand to rest on the tiller. It was full dark now, and he couldn’t see the stars, or land, but he didn’t need to. He knew where they were going.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://furs-and-gold.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
